Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and President Obama wave to the audience during the first presidential debate at the University of Denver in Denver on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012. The next debate, town-hall style, will bring Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney to Hofstra University on New York's Long Island on Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Libyan followers of the Ansar al-Shariah Brigades burn the U.S. flag during a protest in front of the Tibesti Hotel in Benghazi, Libya, on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012. Small teams of U.S. special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa to set up a new counterterrorist network months before militants killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, but officials say the network was too new to stop that attack. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon)

J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who was killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2011, is pictured in Benghazi on Wednesday, April 11, 2011. Leaders of a House committee have said U.S. diplomats in Libya made repeated requests for increased security for the consulate in Benghazi and were turned down by officials in Washington. In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rep. Darrell Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz said their information came from "individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya." (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Tunisian protesters demonstrate outside the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia, on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012. Leaked conversations in which alcohol bans and the imposition of religious law were mentioned have raised fears that Tunisia's new government may not be moderate at all, especially in the context of mob attacks on the U.S. Embassy that coincided with the American ambassador's killing in neighboring Libya. (AP Photo/Amine Landoulsi)

**FILE** A Libyan man investigates the inside of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, after an attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, two days earlier. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon)

The Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was planned and “not spontaneous,” a U.S. intelligence official has told The Washington Times.

The official’s statement rebuts news reports that there is no evidence the attack was planned, even as the intelligence community says al Qaeda-linked militants carried out the deadly assault. The official, who is not authorized to talk to the news media, asked to remain anonymous.

The news reports support the Obama administration’s use of the word “spontaneous” to describe a mob assault that ended in the death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Republicans charge that the continual use of “spontaneous” days after the attack misled the American people about what happened and what could have been done to protect Stevens and the others.

The U.S. intelligence official, who has access to a wide swath of reporting from various spy agencies, told The Times that a few days after the attack, “We looked at it and said, ‘There is enough information here. There’s a body of evidence here that we resolvedly say, tells us, that this was not a spontaneous attack.’ We adjusted our assessment.”

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have pressed Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to disclose the exact reporting he received in order to tell the White House initially that the attack was “spontaneous” and linked to protests in the region over an anti-Islam video on YouTube.

The director’s immediate assessment differs from those of other intelligence agencies.

The Times reported Oct. 2 that the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency on Sept. 12 briefed higher-ups that the attack was planned and carried out by extremists, likely a group called the Ansar al-Shariah Brigades.

The briefings, which would have been circulated within the administration, made no mention of a spontaneous protest or the video, said a source familiar with the briefing.

In addition, The Associated Press reported Friday that the CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of the lethal attack that evidence showed it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob.

Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, told The Times that the differences in the assessments could be attributable to the fact that different agencies are involved.

“If the initial reports were not fully coordinated or consistent, perhaps that’s not too surprising,” Mr. Aftergood said. “We talk about ‘the intelligence community’ as a singular entity, but it actually has many components that function independently. They will not always convey an identical message, particularly in the early hours of a crisis.

“Of course, there is always room for skepticism about these official explanations, but in this case, it’s hard to see how anyone’s interests would have been served by getting it wrong,” he said. “So I’m inclined to chalk it up to confusion and incomplete reporting rather than something more malevolent.”

“Clapper had to have known the true situation,” Mr. Bechtel said. “However, the White House and State [Department] went out ahead of the [director of national intelligence] and put out the official administration propaganda signaling the line they intended to take. Clapper could follow along or look for another job.”